[net.micro.pc] Golden Bow System's VCache

connery@bnrmtv.UUCP (Glenn Connery) (08/18/86)

...
Just a couple of days ago I received the above disk caching software and
have been running it on my PC/AT.  This is a write-through disk cacher
which can utilize regular memory, LIM/EMS expanded memory or PC/AT extended
memory for the cache.  I have an AST Advantage board with 1.5M on it.  After
rounding out the regular memory to 640K, this leaves me with 1408K to
play with.  Allocating the entire thing to a disk cache instead of to the
DOS VDisk seems like the best idea from the few tests I've done.  You avoid
all of the special case code in synonyms and batch files, shorten your
autoexec file, and avoid having to run special load batch files to load
say your microsoft c compiler, libraries and include files onto ram disk.
It won't be quite as fast the first time you try something, but upon
subsequent uses it appears to be just a little more efficient than VDISK.
Plus you get the benefit of caching of data files as well.

Currently I have the system set up for 1M of VCache and 384K of VDISK, which
I use just for the TMP files created by the various passes of the Microsoft
C compiler.  This seems to be a marginal trade off, but pays off a little
for large compiles.  For those of you who are interested it has sped up my
whole system quite noticably, except for the compile time on microsoft
c, which hasn't changed much (i.e. its still abominably slow).

Anyway, at this point I strongly recommend the product for those with LIM
or extended memory boards.  Its available from Golden Bow Systems, P.O.
Box 3039, San Diego, California 92103, (619)298-9349 for $80.00 +TAX +S&H.
-- 

Glenn Connery, Bell Northern Research, Mountain View, CA
{hplabs,amdahl,3comvax}!bnrmtv!connery

john@hp-pcd.UUCP (john) (08/30/86)

<<<<
<
<
< Anyway, at this point I strongly recommend the product for those with LIM
< or extended memory boards.  Its available from Golden Bow Systems, P.O.
< Box 3039, San Diego, California 92103, (619)298-9349 for $80.00 +TAX +S&H.
<
actually its $65 + $3 S+H.


John Eaton
!hplabs!hp-pcd!john